Patients with brain injuries benefit from software developed by CUH consultants

An online tool developed by a CUH neurosurgeon is improving rehabilitation for people with brain injuries.

The software has been developed by Alexis Joannides, a CUH neurosurgery registrar and clinical lecturer at the University of Cambridge, working alongside Dr Fahim Anwar, consultant in rehabilitation medicine.

The company Alexis set up to develop the tool, Obex Technologies, has received a £750,000 grant from SBRI Healthcare, an NHS England funded initiative to develop innovative products that address unmet health needs.

Obex is creating an integrated rehabilitation platform for long-term management, tracking and support of patients with brain injury.

Brain injury patients often undertake rehab at several different institutions, and at the moment they usually carry their notes with them in a paper folder, which means information meant for different clinics can be incomplete or get lost altogether.

Dr Alexis Joannides, clinical lecturer in neurosurgery and Obex Technologies director, said: "We're creating a system that can help transfer data for patients with brain injuries across different hospitals. It's something that's been needed for a long while, and we have experience developing software that can transfer referral data from different hospitals, so using this funding we will be looking to adapt that."

Dr Fahim Anwar said: "These patients have complex needs and it's quite hard to summarise everything on a piece paper in a way that can be used by everyone.”

Dr Alexis Joannides added: "We've already gathered data from 42 patients in phase one of our programme, and showed we can move it around securely. Now in phase two we're going to look at how we can move data across the larger network in the East, which encompasses 40 different units."

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